﻿﻿Is your 5 or 6 year old child REALLY ready to go off to school?﻿﻿Many students enter school today without the physiological and/or neurological readiness skills necessary to perform expected school tasks. Often, these students continue to having difficulty to learn, become increasingly frustrated and struggle in school. Schools must do more to help these students develop the readiness skills necessary for success in school. The basic curriculum used in primary schools today, assume that students have reached a certain level of development. They assume that students see clearly what is printed in front of them and that they see a clear single image. They assume that students have develop the finely coordinated muscles control in the eyes necessary to follow along and read in a book, maintain reading place, and not unknowingly mix words or entire sentences. They assume that students have already developed or will naturally develop the muscle skills necessary to coordinate the fine muscles movements for activities such as writing, cutting and coloring.

Traditional curriculum doesn't address the problems of students whose development lacks the necessary readiness skills. As teachers, we watch the students in our classrooms who are not able to complete tasks and we assure ourselves and their parents that they are just a little slower and that they will 'catch on'. Some of them do. What do we do for those who don't?

We've been reassured that it is not our fault when students do not catch on because they are 'special' students for who learning cannot be expected to come easily. We unconsciously lower our expectations. We refer these students to special programs where they have more individual help and can get more input. This increased input may not help; however, because the students lack the readiness skills that we, as teachers, have not been trained to identify.

Again and again, veteran teachers watch a particular student who has caught their attention in their classroom. Even early in the year, they recognize that this student may not have the necessary skills to go on to the next grade the following year. What is it about this student? Is it the fact that the student can’t catch a ball, has no interest in writing or coloring, trips over the cracks on the floor, writes his/her name with letters all over the page? Whatever it is, these teachers know that this student will not be ready for the next year and may need a “repeat” year to mature and develop.

Can Learn Christian Academy has such a curriculum to do just that—help students develop the readiness skills they need for academic success. Ideally, this curriculum should be used during the early years (preschool through second grade) when it can help ALL students, from those who are already struggling to those who are ahead of the curve, build readiness skills and increase reading performance. This curriculum has also been used successfully with students with readiness related issues beyond second grade to accelerate their reading skills.